I don’t know if this is just a fad in my little corner of the world in NE Columbus, OH – but ‘sign twirlers’ as they are called are making a comeback. I guess online advertising is a thing of the past and these guys with their guerilla tactics are taking over the world. I mean, hey, wouldn’t you buy from a pink gorilla in a tutu with a balloon & a sign?
Besides the embarrassment of being one of these ‘entertainers’ on the side of a busy road, companies must be getting desperate with their advertising budgets. Even twirlers know how to market themselves outside of twirling!
Let’s do the quick math:
- $75 on a sign +
- $10/hr * 8 hrs a day =
- $155/day
I sat at a nearby intersection and took a rough estimate of how much traffic that would have possibly seen this sign (not an accurate count of who actually saw the sign & processed it – just drove by) and it came out to about 5,000 drive-bys/hour at this mid-busy intersection. That comes out to 40,000 cars for the 8 hour shift. Let’s take that 40,000 and make it a more realistic number
- The light stopped north/south traffic once a minute to allow the right-most lane to take time to see the sign, so let’s say the first 10 cars in the right most lane & the front 5 in the left lane could see the sign while they sat at the light (if they weren’t looking at their cellphones, or another billboard, or another sign in the area, or the radio, etc). 900 cars for the hour – 7,200 for the shift.
- This is a four lane road that I was sitting at, and the sign guy was on the NE corner of the intersection. So basically none of the Northbound traffic could see the sign. That negates half of our original 40,000. When the light hit red, the front few cars would be able to see the man, so let’s say 5 cars/minute looked left and saw the twirler. 300/hr or 2,400 for the shift.
- The NE corner that I observed is also part of a mildly busy shopping center plus a few fast food joints, so let’s add another 10 cars coming out of the parking lot where the twirler was adding another 600 cars/hr or 4,800 for the shift.
We put our numbers together and see of the estimated 40,000 people that drove by this sign, only 14,400 had the opportunity to see what the sign was about. During that time I saw no one pull into this place’s establishment, so for that shift, they received no interest, no sales for their $155.
If you look at this as a online advertising venture, through Facebook, Google, Yahoo, etc – this company wouldn’t have wasted $155 to have no one ‘pull into their establishment’ (or click into their website). If no one was interested in what they were selling, they wouldn’t have clicked the ad and cost the company that ad credit.
Also, with online advertising, you are marketing to the people who may already be interested in your product, in this experiment an apartment complex. I would assume (without looking into apartment hunting demographics) you’d want to use your marketing budget to target a female crowd, maybe single mothers or young families. With roadside advertising, you aren’t doing any targeting (except for a possible sampling of locals) but even then you aren’t guaranteed to get a local crowd on a busy Columbus intersection like you are able to do with relative ease when you use online advertising.
So instead, take that $155 and put it into online advertising. You can choose who sees your ad which increases the likelihood that they’ll want what you are selling. You only pay for the people that click the ad which also increases your ROI. If you haven’t dipped a few dollars into online advertising at this point, you really should ask someone who has – they’ll tell you how great the results can be.
How is your company spending marketing dollars? Are you utilizing new & innovative online marketing initiatives are you still holding a sign on the side of the road? Take a look into online advertising and be sure to give me a ring if you need a hand.